Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  I closed my eyes and sank to the car seat, resting my head awkwardly on my pack. In a few moments, the fire that raced through my legs died down and my head no longer spun. I opened my eyes and the girl still looked at me over the back of the seat.

  “Are you sick?”

  I breathed deeply. Was this the woman? Was this Her? I could no longer tell. I wasn’t safe, not anywhere. Not with the power this woman had. I had to be very careful. “Just my legs. The cold . . .”

  “Oh,” she said, and nodded with understanding. “Where are you going?”

  “Red Creek,” I breathed.

  “Why’d you leave your friend in the car?” Our eyes met for a brief moment. I could feel her judgment, her disapproval. “Didn’t she want to come with you?”

  How could I explain that Winnie’s fears had locked me out of her car? How could I explain the compulsion that overtook me, the escape route I was following? How could I explain that I had some terrible disease, or so it seemed, and my salvation lay in a little cottage in Red Creek?

  I was too tired to explain.

  Instead, I remembered my talent, long dormant, for charging the air in a room, and I closed my eyes and brought romance and mystery into the car, and a sense of adventure for the two young lovers.

  “Leave her alone, Marsh,” the boy said. “Let her rest.”

  The girl gave me a weak smile and turned around again, facing forward, snuggling under his arm, and again I was on the way to Sarah. Safe, for the time being.

  “I’d prepared all my life for Angelina. I didn’t know it, of course, but I had done my homework, and done it well. I learned how to track, how to sniff the air, how to learn habits and predict movements, how to develop my intuition.

  “The police in Seven Slopes wanted to publish a picture of Angelina, so I gave her description to the police artist. It was very strange, seeing her face again as it came to life on his sketch pad. He added just the right touches, too, a little feral look, thin and desperate, wild and cagey, sort of like her apartment smelled.

  “I took a copy of that drawing to the bar with me and just sat and stared at it. It was a face I’ve known all my life.

  “I got off track there for a while in Seven Slopes, I was so bloody disappointed, but as soon as I got word that she’d been spotted in Santa Fe, all my senses returned. This was no crank call, either. This was an accurate sighting, by six policemen, for Christ’s sake, and I flew.

  “She was one step ahead of me.

  “But one step behind was a lot closer than I’d gotten before.”

  28

  We passed the time in silence, my mind growing sharper as we neared Red Creek. Eventually we entered the little town and drove straight through—through to the restaurant/bar that served as a bus stop. I had them let me out in the parking lot and they drove off without so much as a good-bye.

  I turned slowly to look at the building. Three cars and a pickup truck sat in the bar side of the parking lot; the brick walls gave no indication of what was inside, only the neon signs advertising it for what it was.

  I had been here two years before. I had been a child then; I had just left Lewis, I was afraid, uncertain, and I went about attacking life, wearing my naivete like armor. I remembered the bus ride from Westwater to here; I remembered getting off the bus and telling the driver that I wouldn’t be continuing with him; I remembered walking down the road that cold night, hearing my boot heels tap a particular rhythm that spelled freedom.

  And freedom was what I found. Freedom from all ties, all possessions, everything personal. Personalities, I had come to believe, function only with respect to each other, never in a vacuum. And so here I was again, free, vacuous, seeking, miserable.

  I had not grown.

  I turned away from the building. The end of my journey lay only a few miles up the road. With my pack slung over my left shoulder and my cane supporting my weaker right side, I began to walk the final leg.

  I heard my boot heels on the pavement, and they tapped out a different tune this time, one hesitant—syncopated almost—in its unevenness, in its pain and misery. I listened carefully though, and heard hope, and heard more hope with each footfall, with each tap of the cane. I was close to Sarah’s. I was so close I could smell her.

  But the dawn was closer yet.

  I don’t know how far I walked; only three cars had passed me when my feet first began to drag pebbles beneath them. I knew the sign, I felt the dawn, but I resisted it, tried to pick up my feet, but my body was just too heavy. I began to stumble. I knew, then, that I dare not act the fool; I had to prepare for the coming day and find a place to sleep. Someplace quiet, private, away from the sunlight.

  On my right I noticed machinery, piles of sand and scrap lumber. A construction site. Farther on, a single light bulb burned in the eave of a new metal building, recently erected, with no sign of tenants. I left the main road and very carefully picked my way amid the carelessly strewn rubbish, looking for a way into the building. The steel doors were locked. I kept looking, my steps weaker, my cane indispensable, yet awkward as it slipped off unsteady pieces of debris and sank deeply into sand.

  At the rear of the building sat a large square trash dumpster, dark blue, with a sheet-metal lid. I looked both right and left, could see no reasonable alternative—could see no alternative at all—so as the actual rose color appeared at the horizon, I quickly found a bit of broken ladder, set it sturdily next to the dumpster, climbed it and propped open the lid. The interior was dark and smelled of paint. There were pieces of wood, chunks of concrete, old rags and papers, dozens of squashed soda cans, an emptied ashtray. A drop cloth was bundled in the corner.

  I threw in my cane, my pack, then gingerly, one leg over at a time, lowered myself inside, being careful of where I stepped. The drop cloth was stiff with dried paint, but pliable to a degree, and I maneuvered it into an appropriate position, then reached up and brought down the heavy lid.

  Quiet. Peace. Darkness.

  I was on my own, making my own way again. I was away from Her, on my way to see Sarah, to get healed, to become whole—normal again.

  I set my jaw against any invasion of my mind, and consciousness was sucked away.

  Low moaning sounds awakened me. Sounds close, reverberating metallically from the thin steel walls around me, muffled by the stiff cloth that was my bed. The moans were all about me, emanating from every corner of the bin, bouncing off the weird conglomeration of sharp angles and soft corners, back again to my ears with their subtle tonal differences. Moans of distress, of discomfort, of the tortures of Hades. Moans from the soul, from the source of pain too deep to define.

  The sounds were mine.

  The air was close, and thick with hot fumes of paint. My head reeled and I grappled for my cane, but it had fallen away from me somehow and I couldn’t seem to grasp it. The fumes rose about me in great jagged technicolor waves, poisoning my brain cells as I lurched, reeling like a praying mantis, trying to escape from my toxic prison. I seemed to move in slow motion, one movement forward and then a long rest while a million bees encircled my head. I scrambled up a mountain of concrete shards on my hands and knees until I could stand and push up the lid. It was hot to the touch; the sun had just settled below the horizon, and it had left its impression, left me to bake in a tin oven filled with poisons.

  Fresh air flooded in, and I gasped at it, growing weaker and sicker instead of stronger and more alert. I sank back to my knees under the weight of the lid, but the stench below, the smell of the drop cloth on which I had slept all day, was overpowering, sickening, and I scrambled frantically for my cane, found it, and worked slowly but desperately to get out of the bin. I pushed on the lid and it rose, higher and higher until it fell over backward and clanged against the back of the dumpster with a sound that sent great purple jags through my vision. They repercussed for a long while as I grasped t
he edge of the bin, breathing deeply. When they faded, I dropped my cane over the edge, then hitched one deadening leg over, rolled my shoulders, and fell to the ground with an “oof!” as my lungs took the shock. I lay there for a long time, trying to clear my head of the bizarre visions, trying to clear my ears of their audio hallucinations.

  A new pattern of red blips crossed my vision; I thought I heard something, something outside of the ravages of hallucination, but I willed it away; I wanted to be left alone, to be ill, violently ill, anything, anything to end this terrible sickness, when suddenly my skin seized up all over.

  Someone had just touched my arm.

  I saw him through peaks and swirls of color; his sounds echoed in my head for days. I struggled to sit, to stand, but flopped on the ground instead, my muscles no longer connected to my nerves or my brain. There was one thing, I remembered, that would calm the raging storm inside my head.

  I moaned, long and loud; it smoothed the waves of color into sedate pools of light. It evened out the rampaging echoes and calmed my fibers. I took a deep breath and calmly unleashed a mantra that relaxed me and brought a sense of my being back into focus.

  The boy lifted me and carried me to the back of his pickup truck. There were two boys, as I now recognized; one was unrolling a sleeping bag while the other held me. I mustered all my strength and will and concentrated on forming my words carefully. “My cane,” I said. My symbol.

  The boy who held me smiled down at me. “We got your cane, don’t worry. We’re going to take you to the doctor, so just don’t worry.”

  I concentrated again. “Sarah,” I said. “Sarah’s house.”

  The boy lay me on top of the sleeping bag, the other put my cane by my side. I listened to them talk between themselves. “Do you suppose she means Sarah Monroe?”

  “Sarah’ll probably be able to help her.”

  “They must know each other.”

  “Sarah’ll at least know whether we should take her to the hospital, you know?”

  “Won’t hurt. She’s at least making sense. Jesus, what do you think she was doing in that dumpster?”

  “Sniffing paint.”

  “Jesus.”

  “C’mon, let’s go.”

  The doors slammed red slashes across my vision and the truck pulled out, each movement dragging some nauseating color across my eyes. Again, I was at the mercy of strangers. Again. But they were taking me to Sarah’s, I would be there in a matter of minutes. This would be the last time I would be at someone’s mercy.

  The last time.

  “I know that the police have a lot of things going on at the same time, and even though they were doing their best, their best wasn’t very good. The police in different counties don’t even communicate with each other, much less the police in different states. The Federal system finally pulled it all together, but holy smokes, it took a long time.

  “I might have been a little more patient, too, if I either had something else to do but sit around and think about Angelina, or if I could have served in some official capacity with a little authority. As it was, I was just a hanger-on, and I’m not used to that.

  “But a murder is a priority for only so long, and then the police get bogged down with other matters, and it gets put on the back burner. If I hadn’t been on their backs all the time, Angelina might have . . . might still . . . well, it’s hard to say.”

  29

  I kept my eyes on the stars and my concentration on breathing deeply. Each turn the truck made clicked with the road map in my memory, and a small smile began to form at the corners of my lips. I felt free already, but the freedom wasn’t from casting away everything that was real, it was embracing that which had value. Sarah had substance—the real feelings of a woman, a complete woman, a warm woman. She would touch me and then I too would find those terribly elusive feelings that had kept me separate all this time.

  The truck stopped, shuddered, kicked, and was still. Two doors slammed, and two young faces looked over the tailgate at me.

  “You all right?”

  I nodded.

  “Stay put. Looks like Sarah’s at home, all right. We’ll get her.”

  I nodded again, tears of relief hot and hard inside my face, and I lay there, waiting with desperation.

  Soon there were footsteps along the gravel path and low talking sounds. I heard Sarah’s voice. It had been sounding in my mind for two years, but in the continuous replaying, my mind had laid down tracks of grit, scratches, and static, so my memory of the sound had lost the most beautiful of its tones. Sarah’s voice was deep and pleasant.

  “I can’t imagine who it could be,” she said, and then she looked over the edge of the truck bed.

  My legs began to twitch. I propped myself up on my elbows, lightning flashes crashing across my vision. “Sarah,” I said.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know who you are,” she said. “Are you a student?”

  “No, no. Angelina Watson. Two years ago . . . sick by the road . . .”

  “Oh, yes, Angelina. I remember. Well, what do you want?”

  “Please,” I said. “I need your help.”

  She sighed and my heart lurched. “I can’t help you, Angelina. I can give you a bed until you recover, but I can’t help you.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “You can. You’re the only one who can.” I lay back down as the edges of their faces began to vibrate in shades of blue and gray and expand and contract with my breathing. I was near the end of my endurance. “Please.” I closed my eyes. “Please understand.”

  “We thought maybe she needed the hospital, Sarah,” one of the boys said. “We found her when she’d just climbed out of a dumpster filled with paint cans.”

  “Okay. Can you boys bring her in?”

  “Sure.”

  The tailgate grated down among blue flashes and I held on to the sleeping bag as they pulled it out the back of the truck. Then I was in someone’s arms, with my cane in my hand, and we followed Sarah, the world biliously bouncing with each step.

  She held the door open, and her scent floated moonglobes across my vision as we passed her.

  Inside, the cottage remained just as I remembered it. The colors were perhaps a bit faded, there were piles of clothes about, but basically it was the same. A mass of twinkling lights in the corner hurt my eyes. I squinted in pain, and realized it was what I had hoped to find at Sarah’s. A Christmas tree.

  “Here. Put her on the bed.”

  The bedspread radiated with orange and red and I felt its design tattooing itself on my back. My legs still twitched. I was cold and beginning to shiver. Sarah covered me with a yellow blanket and left the room. I heard her talking with the boys, then doors slammed and the truck roared off down the road. When she returned, she held two steaming mugs of hot tea.

  With a gentle hand behind my head, she lifted me up for a sip, then settled me back down with a pillow. She sat on the edge of the mattress and regarded me with cool brown eyes while she blew the steam across her own mug.

  I couldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Angelina,” she finally said. “What are you doing?”

  “I had to come here,” I managed to say. “I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “With . . . I can’t—I need—I don’t— Oh, God!” I was incap­able of explaining through the pain, through the frustration, the years, the lifetimes of bizarre experiences.

  “I think you need some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “No, no, now, please now.”

  “No, it’s getting late. I have work to do yet tonight and I have to dance tomorrow. I have to sleep. You stay here and I’ll sleep in Samuel’s bed.”

  “Samuel. Where is he?”

  “With his father,” she said with a touch of something red that I could not identify but could plainly se
e in the tonal difference of her speech. “Good night.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Sarah.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, then turned out the light.

  I lay awake, watching the patterns of my visual hallucinations dance across the ceiling, feeling the cold, empty numbness in my entire body, feeling the ache in my legs. I was glad to be in Sarah’s little house, and even though she wasn’t pleased to have me here, she soon would be. We would be good together. Very good together.

  As the night deepened I slept, and dreamed of the dawn, then dreamed no more. When I next awoke, it was the following evening, and Sarah was frantic.

  Before my eyes were completely open, she had jumped on the bed and was shaking my shoulders. “Angelina! Angelina! Wake up.” I tried to push her off of me with my hands, but they were awakening slowly. I did little but brush at her.

  “God, I thought you were dead. The doctor said you were in a coma, because of the paint fumes, and you might never wake up.”

  It took a moment to understand what she was telling me. “Doctor?” I asked, a queer taste on my tongue.

  “He’s calling an ambu— Wait!” She jumped up and went into the other room. I heard her talking excitedly, then they both came back into the bedroom and stood looking down at me. I blinked up at them, willing myself to wake up, to be alert, to say something—if not significant, then at least intelligent. My body ached anew.

  “Well, young lady, you gave us quite a scare.” The doctor wore thick black glasses, a plaid shirt rolled up at the cuffs, and blue jeans. His dark hair was beginning to gray at the temples.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, then scraped my tongue on my teeth, trying to dislodge the taste.

  “I’ll get you something to drink.” Sarah looked to the doctor for his nod of approval, then disappeared.